Pirate Bay tracker shuts down

The Pirate Bay has shut down its tracker in an unprecedented move that will see the filesharing network take a more decentralised stance. Despite the tracker closing, the site itself will stay online and active - using both trackerless solutions and the unaffiliated OpenBitTorrent tracker.

The site said in a blog post: "TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down! It's the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date. We have put a server in a museum already, and now the tracking can be put there as well".

Magnet links have also popped up all over the site, which is a way of downloading torrents without having to download a .torrent file first. Most modern clients support these links. Modern clients should also support DHT and PEX protocols that can be used to find peers to download from without a central tracker pointing the way.

It's not clear yet what this means for the legal departments of content companies who've spent the last few years trying to get these trackers shut down. Now that the sites are shutting down their own trackers with no adverse affect on filesharers, will the assault against individuals begin once more?

Or will it all be rendered obsolete by an improved licensing regime and more legitimate services? Let us know what you think will happen in the comments.